Midwest CMG Agenda - Wednesday, October 19, 2005

8:30 AM	Registration and Coffee
9:00 AM	Opening - Welcome – Donna Folkerts, MCMG President
9:15 AM	Linux Performance Tuning Jaqui Lynch, Mainline Information Systems Ms. Lynch will present the basics of performance tuning on a Redhat Linux system. Tuneables, as well as some architectural issues, will be discussed.
10:30 AM	Morning Break
10:45 AM	Performance Modeling and Analysis of Web Switch Jie Lu, BMC The Web switch is a key component of Web cluster architecture. It is often built on a network processor (NP). Mr. Lu will present an analytic performance model for analyzing the performance of NP-based Web switches. The model contains parameters of system configurations, dispatching algorithms, and workload characterizations that allow users to troubleshoot performance bottlenecks and provision the capacity of the Web switch.
12:00 PM	Lunch in Brio on the 15^th Floor
1:15 PM	Where's Waldo: Uncovering Hard-to-Find Application Killers Claire Cates, SAS Institute We've all heard about performance anti-patterns, yet how do you find these problems in your system?  Ms. Cates has used Rational Quantify for over ten years and has learned many tips and tricks to help uncover common anti-patterns. She will describe the wealth of data generated by Rational Quantify and how to use this data to uncover software performance problems such as excessive memory allocation, the ramp, unnecessary processing, one lane bridge, and more.
2:30 PM	Afternoon Break
2:45 PM	Redefining Capacity Planning for Grid Computing Marina Cismas, Bank of America Grid computing is an emerging concept that will change the way we use and think about technology. Ms. Cismas will explore how the role of capacity planning will change in respect to the promise of grid technology. The field is becoming ever more critical, despite rapid hardware price-performance improvements. What are the benefits and challenges that capacity planning analysts will face when working with grids? There are new capacity planning objectives and innovative performance improvement strategies that are promised by grid technology. What are they? [This is a Performance and Capacity Planning Hot Topic for the CMG 2005 conference.]
4:00 PM	Meeting Adjourned

Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza
350 North Orleans Street
Chicago, IL 60654

1-312-836-5000

The Speakers:

Claire Cates	Principal Systems Developer - SAS Institute, Inc. Claire has been with SAS Institute for 22 years. During this time she has been involved in the development of many areas of the SAS System. For the past 8 years she has worked primarily on software performance and resource usage. Using 3rd party and in-house tools, Claire has been able to locate inefficient algorithms and recommend changes in order to improve overall system performance.
Marina Cismas	Ms. Cismas works for the Bank of America in the Capacity Planning and Performance Management group. This will be her second presentation at CMG/MCMG. Previously she spoke on “Defining a Capacity Planning Process for Large-scale Enterprises” at our 03/10/2004 meeting.
Jie Lu	Jie Lu has 13 years of IT experience; the last eight of which have been with BMC Software.  Jie Lu works as BMC's technical lead of the development team for the data analysis component of Performance Assurance Solutions. Mr. Lu's focus is on performance analysis and modeling for distributed systems.
Jaqui Lynch	Ms. Lynch has over 25 years experience in the Information Systems industry. She has been responsible for a wide range of projects and operating systems across multiple platforms including mainframes, UNIX systems, midrange systems, and personal workstations. She has presented Sunday Sessions on UNIX at CMG. Currently, she is in her second year as CMG President. She previously spoke to MCMG on “AIX EXTRA: Planning for LPAR and DLPAR” at our 10/13/04 meeting.

Reminder: If you parked in the garage, be sure to have the ticket stamped at the Holiday Inn Check-in Counter on the 15^th floor to get the reduced $10 fee; otherwise, it will be at the daily rate.